One of the harder types of question to answer effectively is a puzzle, which as I define it means that there is no routine way to solve it, so any hint would likely give away the answer. But sometimes these are only “puzzles” to us, because we don’t know the context that would have told …
(New Question of the Week) Many of the questions we answer are primarily about “how do you solve this problem?”, but at the same time ask deeper, more general questions: “How do you solve problems like this, and are there alternatives?” Today’s question is a good example of this, and raises an interesting point or …
(Archive Question of the Week) Having discussed various issues involving categorizing shapes, let’s take a look at a very different shape question, which didn’t fit into the last post. Is “diamond” appropriate? The word “diamond” is not a formal mathematical term; some people take it as equivalent to “rhombus”, while others equate it to “kite”, …